JPD

If the person lives it is through his own thought and action - you have no evidence that your God exists so quite how quite you can ascribe the person's survival to a non-existent entity is at least as big a mystery.
Is the latter supposed to be seen in a positive light? How would your God know that he would prefer to die rather than continue living after a spell in hospital (here I have assumed that your God has taken his life because the person is in a very bad condition). Why does your God have the power to let him die - to intervene in one way - but not the power to stop the bear killing him?

Think again - your assertion is that prayer is effective so it is up to you to devise a test that could demonstrate that is is true or false. If you are testing things then you are in scientific territory. Perhaps a useful place to start would be the history of testing the effectiveness of prayers. Something else that an eye needs to be kept on is the ease with which certain religiously inclined individuals will start making excuses if the result they were expecting doesn't materialise, along the lines of. "Oh well God doesn't reward certain kinds of prayer if people want things for the wrong reasons". Infinite get-out clauses make this a waste of everyone's time.


In common with the opinions in the Bible then no? Or have you already decided that the Bible is true no matter what it says?


Not this again rhutchin - as soon as the weaknesses in the wager are discussed you start off down this road. If you are not aware of the problems with the wager after so much discussion then perhaps you need to revisit it. Don't pretend that it is perfect. Unless your definition of perfection is that that you would apply to the Bible.

JPD

Like Ted Haggard for example but people won't always reveal their true selves as obviously as this. But when he upsets one entity he has another he can blame - herein lies the beauty of religion - the ability to praise or blame one or another entity (which can be neither proven nor disproven to exist) for one's own predicament, regardless of how much the believer's own poor behaviour or lack of judgement contributed.

JPD

So you have a way to determine probability from evidence - okay. Now present the evidence. You're going to say "The Bible"

rhutchin

Anytime we give readers more accurate info, that makes me feel better. Doesn’t it make you feel better also?

Making a decision based on a desire to avoid punishment sees somewhat rational to me. To accept punishment unnecessarily seems silly. At the least, it should require that a person have some reason for doing so. That seems logical to me. What about you?

So, you don’t think you should factor it in? I don’t understand why a person would not. A person does not have to believe the Bible is true to understand that they cannot prove that it is not true so there is a risk of believing the Bible is not true when it is true.:huh:

JPD

Yes.
What makes me happy is developing an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches.

It would be rational if the basis was. But it isn't - there is no evidence - there still is no evidence - that heaven and hell exist beyond descriptions in the Bible, the Quran and so on. I wonder what the mental state of the authors was at the time of composition and what they had been doing (not necessarily the same thing as what they had written about) to cause such locations to be created in people's minds. Was it an attempt at guilt transfer? You could arrive at a logical point through a number of illogical stages.

And there is also a risk - if you wish to apply Pascal's wager to a wider field than just the Biblical God - of you choosing the wrong God and angering the real one. You could choose the real God but the real God hates being worshipped. You could choose the right God but that God hates people who believe in it in an attempt to evade punishment. That God might be furious that you could believe that it could create such a thing as hell when it had created the universe. And so on and so forth. I don't believe in the existence of any Gods - whichever ones you are talking about - so I have no demonstrably greater or lesser risk of ending up in this place called hell that you believe in the existence of.

JPD

A being so complex that it can create itself and the entire universe without being detectable, yet we are supposed to believe that it is the same being described in the Bible, the Quran etc? That jealous, interfering individual that only reveals miracles to crackpots? I think not.

Johnny Skeptic

If a supernatural God inspired the writing of the Bible, he could easily reveal or conceal his true identity according to his wishes. Otherwise, he wouldn't be a God. If such a being exists, he might tell the truth, he might tell lies, or he might sometimes tell the truth and sometimes tell lies. The odds are no better than even that God is who the Bible says he is, and the odds are zero that Paul could have determined what God is really like if God is evil and did not want Paul to know what he is really like.

JPD

"Well the Bible is all we have"

Apart from all the other religious texts.

I wonder whether a text which proclaimed the following would catch on:

Here then ye. Your creator made you so that you could believe anything whether it be possible or not, whether it existeth or not. Such is the massive and fine complexity of your maker that it needed not a larger machine to bring itself into existence. Yet you, sat there, all this you see, are visible to all. Due to the following equation, however, your maker cannot be detected:

(dfkdkfgdghghj88^^)*(^&*%^786789678)
---------------------------------------------
(fgf$££&^4$&%95)*(%89056807%&)*(578%7)


with a puff pastry top



wherein the letters and symbols represent unknown constants to be determined through experimentation and space travel. Once solved you will develop a machine that will disassemble what looks like me. I have, however, already started working on the 28th level beyond that on which the equation above sits. The equations increase in complexity logarithmically so plug that into your dials fatboy.


No opportunity to control people there and pass it off as being for their own benefit (and making the religious leaders feel warm inside and satisfy themselves with a non-answer)....so probably not.

No what we have instead is the earth is a cutout from a cornflakes packet and a valid scenario for dealing with infants is to bash them against rocks. Tremendous!

The Evil One

You brought it up. glad you agree with us.

Johnny Skeptic

You still do not understand that even if everyone knew what the risks are, decent people are not able to love the God of the Bible. If God told lies, you would not be able to love him, and yet ask people to accept a God who has committed numerous atrocities that are much worse than lying is. Following are some of the numerous atrocities that God has committed against mankind:

1 - God makes people blind, deaf, and dumb, reference Exodus 4:11.

2 - God punishes people for sins that their ancestors committed, reference Exodus 20:5.

3 - God killed babies at Sodom and Gomorrah

4 - God kills people with hurricanes, including some of his most devout followers. Even Attila the Hun did not kill his own followers.

5 - God empowered a savage Devil to help him attack mankind.

6 - God is willing that some people starve to death even though he has food in abundance. In the Irish Potato Famine alone, one million people died of starvation, most of whom were Christians. It is probable that many if not most of the Christians desperately asked God to provide them with food, but to no avail. James says that if a man refuses give food to a hungry person, he is vain, and his faith is dead. This makes God a hypocrite. Human effort alone could never feed all of the hungry people in the world, and human technology at this time is not able to prevent God’s killer hurricanes from seriously injuring and killing people, and destroying their property.

7 - Today, it appears that all tangible benefits are distributed entirely at random according to the laws of physics. This is to be expected if God does not exist. If he does exist, then he frequently distributes tangible benefits to those who are not in greatest need, but frequently withholds tangible benefits from those who are in greatest need, and with no provable regard for a person’s worldview.

Do you believe that hurricanes do or do not operate in a random manner?

8 - God deliberately withholds information from some people who would accept it if they were aware of it. If God clearly revealed himself to everyone, no man could complain that he did not have adequate information, in which case no man would have any excuses. As it is, on judgment day, any man who has never heard the Gospel message who Jesus chooses to send to hell can rightly say that the rules were not clearly disclosed. In addition, on judgment day, any man who has heard the Gospel message and rejected it, and would have accepted it if he had had more information, can rightly say that he was treated unfairly.

In the thread on 2 Peter 3:9, you said “If God revealed Himself in the manner you are describing, then everyone would obviously become a Christian.” I replied “But you have said that the Devil knows that God exists, but has rejected God, so you have refuted your own argument. In addition, millions of decent people would not be able to accept God even if they believed that he exists.”

God is able to provide additional information that would convince some people to become Christians who were not previously convinced, which means that he is not nearly as loving and merciful as you claim he is. If a man tells his son on numerous occasions not to drive when intoxicated, you would probably claim that the son had been provided with sufficient information, but you most certainly would not claim that if the father saw his son try to drive when intoxicated that the father would not still tell his son not to drive when intoxicated. It is called love and compassion.

Human effort alone could never let everyone know about the Gospel message. In the first century, it is not likely that anyone who lived in China could have known about the Gospel message unless God told them about it, and history has shown that God has little or no interest in telling people about the Gospel message himself. If God provided me with additional evidence, I might become a Christian.

God intends to hold some people accountable for what they OUGHT to have known rather than holding them accountable for what they DID know. That is not fair. As far as I know, there are not any laws in democratic countries that invoke the death penalty or life in prison if a person is not aware a law. No many can fairly be held accountable for rejecting a God who he does not know [supposedly] exists.

If the Bible is true, I refuse to tell people about the Gospel message out of ignorance, not out of intent. On the other hand, God refuses to tell some people about the Gospel message out of intent.

9 - God endorses unmerciful eternal punishment without parole. If mercy is anything, it is forgoing eternal punishment without parole even when justice, in this case, God’s justice, requires it. Otherwise, mercy is meaningless.

10 - No loving, rational being, whether a human or a God, ever intentionally does anything without the hope of benefiting himself and/or someone else at present, or in the future. It has not been reasonably established that God derives any benefits whatsoever from making people blind, deaf, and dumb. It is most certainly not necessary to make a man blind, deaf, and dumb in order to convince him to become a Christian. In fact, one of the best ways to convince a man not to become a Christian would be to make him blind, deaf, and dumb. It most certainly is not necessary to allow a man to starve to death in order to convince him to become a Christian. If God had always provided all of the hungry people in the world with food, and had always told everyone, tangibly, in person, that he was the source of the food, the Christian church would surely be a lot larger than it is today.

11 - In the Old Testament, God ordered the death penalty for a Jew who killed a Jew, but not for a Jew who killed a slave. In addition, the New Testament does not clearly oppose slavery, even though it easily could have if God exists. If it did, the world would be a much better place in which to live in.

Now rhutchin, you can claim that I have not provided sufficient evidence of atrocities that God has committed against mankind if you wish, but rational minded and fair minded people know that if the God of the Bible exists, he is either evil or mentally incompetent. Under our legal system, many of God’s actions and allowances are punishable by life imprisonment or death. If telling lies is wrong, it is wrong no matter who tells lies, including God. If refusing to feed hungry people is wrong, it is wrong no matter who refuses to feed hungry people, including God. If killing people is wrong, it is wrong matter who kills people, including God. Hypocrisy is wrong no matter who is a hypocrite, including God. Are you actually going to tell us that telling lies is worse than killing people and allowing people to starve to death when you have plenty of food?